1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to electronic commerce, and more particularly to methods and systems for offering goods and services via catalogs.
2. Description of Related Art
Computer networks offer geographically distributed users unprecedented opportunities to interact with each other. One widely used network is the Internet. The Internet includes a system of interconnected computers and computer networks operatively forming a single world wide network. A user, through the Internet, can interactively transmit messages with users in different locations. Similarly, a user in one location can connect to files and libraries in other locations. Thus, the Internet provides versatile communications functions and acts like a library, providing electronic access to resources and information available from Internet sites throughout the world. Access to the Internet can be had from a wide range of locations and through a wide range of devices. For example, a user with a laptop computer and a modem may connect to the Internet through a telephone jack. Wireless Internet connections are also available.
Electronic commerce has emerged as an important use of the Internet. The Internet is used to assist buyers and sellers in purchasing or selling a variety of goods and services. Methods of purchasing and selling cryptographic systems and methods have been developed at least in part for assuring authenticity of a signer of a transaction, electronic payment systems, and electronic auction systems and methods. Electronic commerce Internet sites typically allow remotely distributed users to interact via an Internet site, through which the users may execute traditional commercial transactions online. Thus, the Internet typically offers convenience, but does not significantly alter the underlying transaction contexts.
The Internet and the World-Wide Web are means by which merchant server software systems communicate catalog information to consumers or other prospective purchasers of information, goods and services. Consumers use web-browsers with HTTP and related protocols to browse, navigate, or search on-line product catalogs as presented by merchant servers. merchant servers transmit relatively unstructured HTML (with other accompanying media formats) to a general purpose web-browser, and support various payment and security protocols to enable credit card authorization and order-taking.
Business-to-business transactions generally take place via electronic data interchange (“EDI”) purchase orders, invoices, and other standard forms, which are usually only readily communicable between enterprises which have previously agreed on one or more EDI forms and formats to be used, and which have previously negotiated terms of sale, payment, and delivery. While EDI can be used to transmit some types of catalog information, it is usually used for transaction-processing, as prior agreements generally required for EDI's use make it possible to send catalogs between business partners in other more efficient ways. EDI has historically been conveyed either through direct communication between business partners over phone lines or private networks, or through VANs (Value Added Networks) which provide a variety of secretarial and administrative services and conveniences for their subscribers. Of late a growing quantity of EDI documents are transmitted across the Internet. Internet use does not, however, in and of itself change the basic nature of EDI document interchange, though it may make it easier for business partners, especially small businesses, to accommodate one another in sharing a common telecommunication infrastructure. In addition, protocols and standards such as OBI (Open Buying on the Internet) are helping to make Internet-based business-to-business commerce easier and more effective as regards transaction and payment processing; but these efforts too do not address catalog publication and distribution.
In neither case described above, (neither business-to-consumer nor business-to-business) is there any common format for publishable machine-readable catalog data. Accordingly, HTML transmitted by merchant servers to consumers is intended for human viewing, not for automated semantic analysis at any level higher than elementary display and I/O functions performed by a web-browser. It is of course often possible to parse HTML for purposes of data-extraction, but this can be a difficult task, and in any event is not a desirable method of sending catalog data between systems or applications. Furthermore, a data-extraction method must be implemented on a per-store or per-merchant-server basis; the same data-extraction method cannot be directly applied to merchant servers or Internet stores in general.
Some efforts have been made to provide for electronic catalogs. An effort known as the Catalog Interoperability Pilot is devoted to enabling catalog interoperability for U.S. government applications across departments and vendors. Catalogs of the Catalog Interoperability Pilot have digital signatures.
The CommerceNet eCo Framework Project attempts to integrate a very wide variety of e-commerce standards and incorporates a “common business language” (CBL). The CBL is used for active business directives and is not used for catalog content.
Referring to FIGS. 4 and 5, prior art systems and methods are depicted. In FIG. 4, a customer 300 using a client machine 301 with a web-browser 302 “visits”, via a network 312, such as the Internet, a web site 304 supported by a merchant server 308 web site and views an on-line catalog 310. Customer 300 interactively chooses purchases and makes a payment using web-browser 302. Aspects of this transaction are managed by merchant server 308, and an active connection to an on-line merchant server 308 is used for this transaction to occur. merchant server 308 may interact with a database 314, which may store the catalog in a relational database format, for example.
Referring to FIG. 5, a prior art system in which a purchaser with a purchasing system 400 generates a purchase order 402 and uses an EDI translator 404 to send the EDI purchase order 402 to a vendor with a vendor system 406 (the form may be sent off-line or asynchronously through a VAN 408) is depicted. The vendor system 406 later generates an invoice 410 which is then generated by an EDI translator 412 into an EDI invoice form and sent to the purchasing system 400, such as via the VAN or private line 408. Other forms may also be employed. In many or most cases an on-line or electronic catalog may not exist, and in any event will probably not be involved in the transaction. It is up to the purchaser and seller (and their back-office systems) to jointly assure that SKUs or other product identifiers and prices are appropriate and correct. EDI does not manage that part of the transaction.
A number of specific drawbacks exist with current methods and systems. For example, in the case of distribution of portions of documents, URL links are a feature of general HTML documents, but HTML is not a suitable format for automatically parseable electronic catalogs. Furthermore, for images and similar multimedia content, HTML does not provide in-line document data, but absolutely requires links. The MIME compound multimedia format, on the other hand, requires in-line document data for all its multimedia parts, and does not permit links.
Another drawback is with existing software systems. While many catalogs are published and disseminated on-line and off-line, and at least one such format is digitally signed, standard software whose purpose is to verify validity of catalogs does not exist for other catalog formats.
Document annotation systems exist, but none provide structured, sourced and signed annotations for publishable commercial catalogs.
Another problem with the prior art is that ordinary merchant server catalogs cannot be conveniently stored in a central repository. While other catalogs issued by various vendors can certainly be stored locally be clients, they cannot be stored in the same repository since they do not share a common format or semantic interpretation of their fields.
Accordingly, a need exists for a standard, flexible format for publishing catalogs and catalog objects electronically.